Chapter Text
“Can’t believe we’re back here,” Hunk sighs, squinting out the cockpit window.
In response, Lance mutters, “If I get a splinter again, I swear to God I will burn this place down.” And can’t help frowning at the unfortunate space outpost they’d visited a week prior under more casual circumstances.
While escorting the scientists from the imploding moon incident back to their home planet, team Voltron took a detour to Plorak outpost to refuel their guests’ navigator pod, since the castle didn’t carry their specific fuel. Coincidentally during that visit, a space-pirate crew called the Saucy Stragglers decided to conduct a raid, but they didn’t wreak much havoc with Voltron nearby. Lance and the others didn’t even have to suit-up for the occasion.
The stage of the battle, the Plorak Outpost—a glorified gas station expanded into a small shipment town on a drifting rock—didn't appreciate the close-quarters combat, and is still recovering from the collateral damage of that raid. The locals have staunchly refused help with repairs, despite Voltron’s sincere offers and attempts.
Plorak has definitely seen better days, and better maintenance for that matter, but clearly not in the recent past. Lance has definitely laid eyes on rustic and ruined architecture out in space before, some that give a decent air of history, but this place looks to be in a general state of disrepair. A lot of the buildings that survived the pirates were already leaning haphazardly against each other beforehand, while others that seem decent enough to stand on their own are decidedly unclean, their metal walls covered in as much dirt and rust as there are splashes of peeling paint. It’s a wonder the pirates wanted to raid this place at all, but it might have to do with the fact that the liquor store has a certificate on its door that reads, “Finest spirits on this side of the galactic quadrant, locally brewed!” Brewed where, Lance has no clue.
From the brief circuit that team Voltron flew around the outpost, Lance noticed that Plorak still has only two working docking bays left unscathed by the attack. Unfortunately, the other ones are under very serious, very slow, repair.
Because of this, the ones that remain functional have accumulated an impatient lineup of ships hovering dangerously closeby, each waiting for the opportunity to slide in and park. As one of the docked cargo vessels unlatches itself and begins to lift off, a leisure pod nearly crashes into another small ship that has painted on its side, “ Spacemail! We bring it right to ya!” As it swerves into the newly vacated spot.
A shrill voice screams from the inside of the mail carrier ship, and through its grainy window Lance sees an alien hand wave an aggressively rude gesture.
“Damn,” he says, as their own small space pod inches closer to the dock. “Why are we back here again?”
Next to him in the cramped vessel, Hunk looks up from his tablet to check on their parking progress and, after seeing it’s not much different from fifteen doboshes ago, looks down again. He reviews what's on his screen before finally answering Lance’s question. “Remember a while back when Pidge and I went to investigate that suspicious asset the galra were moving? The one that shut off our tech when we got too close?”
Lance makes a face trying to remember the details of that mission, while Pidge, gripping the steering wheel of the space pod in two steel fists, glares hard at a magenta ship next to them that’s wiggling in a way to cut them off. She presses a button that broadcasts their comms and yells, “Don’t you dare! You just got here, I’ve been here nearly sixteen doboshes and I will unmake your ship if you get any closer to me.”
The magenta ship stops, its engine sputtering, before reversing sharply out of sight.
Turning back to Hunk, Lance shrugs and says, “I think I remember?” Oh, he definitely remembers. It was the first day he ever called Torvald.
Hunk starts swiping back on his screen a few times before continuing, “Yeah, so Pidge and Coran have been tapping into more frequencies to see if there’s more talk about the package, but for a long time we didn’t get anything about it. Until something came up the other day. This just happens to be the place we traced this conversation from.”
Flipping the tablet to face Lance, Hunk shows him a short transcript that reads:
A: Is that thing coming by our post? Y’know, the thing that the prince is—
B: Shut up. Are you stupid?
A: I’m not stupid.
B: Anyone could be listening, and you’re trying to talk about the prince’s secret project on this line?
A: How else do I talk about it, Bonck? I can’t read, and if we write it we’ll have to destroy it, and I don’t think I’ll be able to remember what we’ve written if we have to destroy it. And you won’t let me leave the office, so I can't talk in person, and even if I wanted to, it would be out in public and how exactly is that keeping a secret? [soft sobbing]
B: Ew, Alany.
A: And we only have two functional docks! Do we even have space to fit it? How will we fit it?
Lance stops reading before Bonck tells Alany to shut up again. Swiping away from the transcript, he says, “But weren’t you guys here yesterday?”
“The foreman got the delivery times wrong,” Pidge responds, sliding quickly into a spot vacated by a boxy ship that putters away. “When we were here yesterday there weren’t any galra, suspicious, or even unmarked cargo ships, and over the comms we heard Bonck yell at Alany about getting the day wrong, so that’s why we’re here again today.” She side-eyes him over her shoulder. “Were you not listening during the debriefing after lunch?”
Lance winces. “Uh, half-listening?”
“U-huh .”
Hunk studies Lance and asks, “Are you okay, man? You’ve been really out of it.”
"Have I?" As soon as he asks, he's suddenly aware of it. "Oh. Sorry, just stuck in my head I guess."
And before Lance realizes it, he's caught fiddling with the bracelet on his wrist. He hastily tucks his hands into his pockets and stares at his shoes, away from Hunk's sympathetic gaze.
"Is Torvald okay? Has he called?"
"Um… Nah. He's been really busy with work." At the corner of his eye, he sees Pidge frown. "He has a project he's working on that's taking up most of his time. Last time we talked was a couple days ago, but even then I could tell how tired he was."
"What does he even do?" Pidge asks, squinting at Lance in the small, crooked rearview mirror they installed. "I don't think you've ever told us what his company does, or what it's called."
“Uh, some kind of machine manufacturing?” He says, trying not to fidget too much.
“Machine manufacturing? ” She narrows her eyes into slits. “What’s the company called then?”
“If I tell you, are you going to research it and tell me he’s a bad person with unethical practices?”
“Only if he is. Remember that one girl you dated? The one who turned out to be a wanted criminal galaxy-wide because of a serious record of high-level theft? Who was hiding on our ship essentially as a stowaway?”
Lance groans. “Don’t.”
“Who had stolen a country’s prized wurm egg and was on the run?”
“Okay , I get it!”
“And where did said prized wurm egg happen to hatch?” Pidge asks as a final jab. Lance winces, remembering having to clean up all the extra gunk that came out of the hatched egg, and how its putrid smell clung to his room for nearly a week. The wurm wasn’t even cute.
Pidge huffs, “A little research isn’t a bad thing.”
As they leave the ship, and before Pidge can pry for more information regarding Torvald’s job—which Lance hasn’t thoroughly made up a story for yet—they hear their individual comms units come to life and beep softly in their ears. Through them they hear Allura clear her throat before saying,
“It’ll be about ten doboshes before the guards at the warehouse rotate shifts. Please make it to your positions on time. Remember, best case scenario, we can take the asset for study, and if not, we disable it, especially if it’s a weapon of some kind.”
“Nooo problem,” Lance says, ignoring the way Pidge tries to catch his attention with her disapproving stare.
“And I…” Allura sighs through her nose. “Will get this distraction going as soon as you guys tell me they’re switching shifts.”
Since the discovery of Shiro’s last vlog, Allura hasn’t actively participated in any missions, but today she mustered enough courage to deploy some decoy maneuvers in order to create a better opportunity for the rest of Voltron to get to this mysterious ‘package’. All the mission stuff aside, Lance is honestly happy she’s getting out of the castle. She even left earlier than the others to get some air and alone time, and in the meantime plant all her bombs.
“You’ll do great!” Hunk assures, adding a sprinkle more cheer into his voice for extra measure.
She laughs. “Thanks, Hunk.”
While Pidge runs Allura through the instructions for her own non-lethal explosives (mostly fireworks and smoke), Lance adjusts his jacket and studies their surroundings. It looks like the dock workers have gathered the debris from the previous space pirate fight and pushed it aside down the road. He feels a little bad seeing it, remembering how he’d shot one of the pirate dinghies out of the sky, altering its momentum in such a way that it accidentally crashed through a mushroom-shaped statue in the middle of the outpost. Aliens wept over the crumbled rock, and he apologized profusely, even though he found out afterward it was just a really expensive figurine advertising a new recreational drug.
The aliens here are weird little guys, for sure. They’re half his size, and shaped like banana peels waiting on the floor to be slipped on. Lance finds them wildly disorganized, and maybe a little silly, especially since he’s currently watching two of them argue in front of him about how to best weld a diamond-shaped plate to the dock, but they’re not arguing about techniques, just which way to rotate it. He figures it'll take them a few more doboshes to realize it won't make a difference either way for a diamond-shaped hole.
While observing them, a small frown settles onto his face. He says to the comms, “Did we get any other information about the package or whatever?”
Hunk’s voice responds, “Not much.”
Then Pidge, “Hopefully, this time our comms units won’t explode, though I’m not too sure why they broke in the first place.”
Lance jogs into an alley where Keith had earlier scouted a fire escape ladder, and with ease climbs to the roof of one of the buildings by the docks. He picks his way over, moving from roof to roof, looking for the one of an electronics repair shop that’s flat, but with several satellites on it that can provide good cover.
It has a decent view of a single warehouse that’s shipping large crates in and out on large hover pallets. One of the banana aliens with a clipboard directs the traffic, while a couple others outfitted in special gear keep an earnest watch. There’s no other patrols, only a handful of sentries. They stumble along, a bit unthreatening.
This is where they’re gonna transport the asset? He doesn’t ask the question aloud, but a sliver of uncertainty sits in his mind longer than he’d like. They probably mentioned something about these aliens being stronger than they look during the debriefing while he wasn’t listening, but for an asset so important that they had to hack frequencies to hear about it, isn’t this outpost a little shabby?
Unable to quell his anxiety, he says, “The security here seems really, uh, low-grade for an important galran asset. Are we sure it’s gonna be here?”
Keith’s voice clicks through, “I know what you’re saying, but it’s the only outpost for entire star systems. Maybe this is the only option.”
Coran adds, “This galaxy doesn’t experience a lot of traffic, so they haven’t built more outposts. This one connects multiple flight paths, it just unfortunately does not receive much of a budget for improvement. It certainly looks underwhelming, number three, I’ll give you that.”
“There has to be another way. Why go through here at all then?” Lance asks, eyeing the dismal state of most of the infrastructure. Certainly the galra can afford a detour?
“Who knows?” Pidge’s voice comes through a bit sharp, likely still a bit annoyed with Lance for dodging questions about Torvald. “We need to know what the asset is at all to know why they’re moving it in the first place, and where they’re trying to bring it. It might not even be that valuable.”
“You have a point there,” he says quietly.
“And I think it would be nice if our mission was a little easy for once.”
Hunk clears his throat. “Anyway, everyone in position?” A round of affirmations push through in a staticy mess. “Nice.”
From Lance’s perch, he spots Pidge and Hunk crouched by some broken pallets, their eyes trained on a holographic screen projecting from Pidge’s wrist.
“Can you tell which one has the, uh, the thing?” Lance asks, pushing down his bad feeling about the whole mission.
He sees Hunk nod, eyeing the lineup of crates getting carried into and out of the warehouse. “Third from the back, the outer container has a similar design to the one we saw before.”
Lance squints, then his eyes widen like saucers. It’s massive, he realizes, comparing it to the size of the banana aliens that struggle to move it along on their hover pallet. From a distance he can only guess, but it must be fifteen feet tall and fifteen feet wide, made of a dark, sturdy metal. The security pad, too, has so many latches and buttons, that Lance can’t even imagine unlocking it the normal way.
“ That one? Are you kidding?”
Pidge huffs. “Oh, I know. Just wait until we get to the inner container.”
A crackle of static cuts through and Keith says, “Two more doboshes to go. You guys ready?”
“As ready as we can get,” Lance says, his bayard transforming into a rifle. A scope forms and he peers through it, checking his angles. “Sure you don’t want to be down here, Keith?”
He sighs. “Too many people will draw attention. And I trust you can cover them in case their comms units bust again, Lance.”
Lance stills. Before he can overthink, he smiles confidently and says, “Obviously.”
Keith follows with, “Pidge, Hunk, you think you’ll be able to get through the second crate?”
“We’ll have to see,” Pidge replies, typing away at a keypad as Hunk delicately prepares a remote-detonating charge. A little bitterly, she adds, “Since hacking it isn’t the way.”
Lance laughs, seeing her disappointed expression even from this distance. “Don’t worry, Pidge. When we get that asset you can see if it’s hackable.” She doesn’t reply, only harrumphs.
Down by the warehouse, as the asset’s crate climbs the ramp and passes the garage-like doors, a bracelet around the alien manager’s left tentacle beeps and he yells, “Put it down, bubs! Shift’s over.” The guards release their tense postures, grateful as they start wriggling away.
“Alright, Allura,” Lance says. “Showtime.”
“Well,” there’s a shuffle on her end of the call. A snap, then a hiss. “Hopefully this works.”
Silence. Then—
ka-BOOM!
Behind Lance, and a few buildings over, a large plume of dust rises from the street, followed by the whine of fireworks that rocket upwards and explode. Sparklers crackle away, and people scream and run from the commotion.
Over the comms, Allura says breathlessly, running away as well, “I suppose that worked?”
On cue, the banana aliens that are filing out and into the warehouse all look to each other in surprise before scuttling off to the continuing explosions. Surprisingly, they don’t roll down the warehouse doors or raise the ramp behind them.
Lance props up his rifle anyway, keeping an eye out on the doors and the streets. “Kind of easy, no?” He asks quietly.
“Like I said, would love it if it stayed that way,” Pidge says, slowly rising from her hiding spot with Hunk as the last of the banana aliens wriggle out of earshot. She’s fiddling with a few cords attached to her wrist-computer, a bit distracted, as next to her, Hunk gathers the bomb and prepares to follow.
Lance squints, checking all exits and entry points as his gut feeling comes back and sweat beads on his brow. Behind him, amidst the chaos, people are yelling and crying, and maybe that’s what’s making him anxious, but the empty warehouse yard, the silly alien security, the in-the-middle-of-nowhere outpost, all of it doesn’t sit right with him. He’s just being paranoid, right? “Please be careful, guys.”
“When are we not?” Pidge huffs, running up the still-lowered ramp to the asset’s shipping container and connecting the security pad to her own device. “Just watch our backs, Lance. I know this outpost isn’t exactly high level, like the other outpost, Welve, but y’know it’s also a secret package they’re transporting. Doubt they’d want to make it so obviously valuable, so maybe that’s why it’s not defended well. There weren’t any galra last time either, y’know.”
Gripping his rifle tightly, Lance adds, “But they still want it to be safe, right? This outpost was just recently attacked by space pirates.”
“And?” He can hear her rolling her eyes.
“Would you send a valuable package to a place that has shitty security and was just recently raided by pirates?”
Beep. Through the comms, Lance hears the successful tone of breached passcodes.
“Maybe that’s a good cover?” Hunk says nervously, ever the mediator, clearly trying to make sure the tension won’t escalate into an argument. Over the mic, Lance hears the hiss and shift of lock tumblers sync up with the slide of the doors on the container.
He sees Pidge look apologetically towards the yellow paladin. Over Hunk’s mic and not Pidge’s, she says, “Hunk, don’t worry, we’re not fighting, I’m just a little ticked that Lance might be setting himself up to get hurt again with this Torv—”
But she doesn’t get to finish her sentence. As she speaks, the shipping container’s doors slide open, almost peacefully ignored while Pidge reassures Hunk and unlinks her device. Instead of a secondary crate beyond those doors that might break their comms units by some mysterious pulsing force, there are four looming shadows in dark purple armor. The one in front, the largest of them, lunges forward with one arm and snatches Pidge’s wrist, lifting her effortlessly into the air.
Pidge cries out, and through her mic Lance hears a voice say, “So this little thing is the one that hacked the shipment?”
Another, with what looks like a long ponytail, peeks around the large one’s frame and cocks her head at Hunk. “And there’s the other one. Thanks for coming back! We were getting bored in here.”